Gandhi vs. Tagore



Gandhi
Tagore
Burning Clothes
Necessary to end imperialism
Empires are fundamentally economic ventures
Power issue
Unbalanced relationship-
Get rid of it and then solve the economic problem; the unbalanced relationship causes the economic problem*
-Immoral
Millions of poor people
Must address poverty
Economic problem, you wouldn't make a scarce substance more scarce
Attending Government Schools
Don't go!
Schools create cogs (clerks and interpreters) in the evil machine (the empire)
Don't cooperate with evil
Go and you'll become enslaved
Go-you'll become smarter and India needs smarter people to solve it's problems, go and you'll become liberated

Moral now
Practical later
Practical
Will lead to moral solutions

Negative acts are necessary to get rid of evil and be able to do positive things (positive + negative=purity)

It is necessary to actively remove the evil parts of society as well as do good acts in order to achieve purity
Positive

Reject current western system because it is evil, remove that evil you can deal with what's left; get rid of west but not forever
Modernizer-Westernizer

Failure of non-cooperation would be that people are not pure enough to be non-violent

*Don't want a Great Wall between them and the western world though
Tagore is a westernizer and a modernizer. Because he sees the problem as an economic problem, the sacrifice is unnecessary because making an economic product more scarce makes the problem worse. Must fix the economic (poverty) problem first and then move on to the moral rights.